Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 137, Issue 1, May 2011, Pages 127-133
Acta Psychologica

Elaborative rehearsal of nontemporal information interferes with temporal processing of durations in the range of seconds but not milliseconds

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.03.010Get rights and content

Abstract

The distinct timing hypothesis suggests a sensory mechanism for processing of durations in the range of milliseconds and a cognitively controlled mechanism for processing of longer durations. To test this hypothesis, we employed a dual-task approach to investigate the effects of maintenance and elaborative rehearsal on temporal processing of brief and long durations. Unlike mere maintenance rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal as a secondary task involved transfer of information from working to long-term memory and elaboration of information to enhance storage in long-term memory. Duration discrimination of brief intervals was not affected by a secondary cognitive task that required either maintenance or elaborative rehearsal. Concurrent elaborative rehearsal, however, impaired discrimination of longer durations as compared to maintenance rehearsal and a control condition with no secondary task. These findings endorse the distinct timing hypothesis and are in line with the notion that executive functions, such as continuous memory updating and active transfer of information into long-term memory interfere with temporal processing of durations in the second, but not in the millisecond range.

Research Highlights

► Brief and long temporal intervals are processed by different timing mechanisms. ► Perception of long intervals interferes with memory processes. ► Discrimination of short intervals is unaffected by a secondary cognitive task.

Introduction

The question of how time is perceived is still unsolved (cf., Grondin, 2001, Grondin, 2010). Over the centuries, various philosophers as well as psychologists, such as Augustine, 1998, Fraisse, 1984, Gibson, 1975, Guyau, 1890, James, 1890, argued that “events are perceivable but time is not” (Gibson, 1975, p. 295). This notion is supported by the realization that time does not represent a stimulus in the psychophysical sense and that there is no specific receptor system for processing of temporal information. Therefore, Grondin (2001) concluded that “psychological time can be seen as the fruit of a mechanism independent of other sensory systems” (p. 23). Nevertheless such a hypothetical amodal mental representation of time in the subsecond range has been seriously challenged by recent findings showing that adaptation to visual motion or flicker produces a spatially localized effect on apparent duration (Ayhan et al., 2009, Burr et al., 2007, Johnston et al., 2006).

As early as 1889, Hugo Münsterberg put forward the idea of two distinct timing mechanisms underlying temporal information processing, which is consistent with the notion that the representation of time within the subsecond range differs from the one in the range of seconds. He assumed that durations less than one third of a second can be directly perceived, since they are primarily processed by sensory mechanisms. By contrast, longer durations, he believed, cannot be immediately perceived but need to be reconstructed by higher mental processes. More recently, Michon (1985) argued that temporal processing of intervals longer than approximately 500 ms is cognitively mediated while temporal processing of shorter intervals is supposedly “of a highly perceptual nature, fast, parallel and not accessible to cognitive control” (Michon, 1985, p. 40). A similar distinction has been advocated by Johnston et al. (2006) and also by Ivry and Spencer (2004).

The notion of distinct timing mechanisms involved in temporal processing of brief and long intervals is also supported by neuropharmacological and neuroimaging studies on timing. Findings from neuroimaging studies with predominantly motor-timing tasks are consistent with the notion of an automatic timing system for measuring brief intervals in the sub-second range and a cognitively controlled system, depending on the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, for temporal processing of intervals in the supra-second range (for a review see Lewis & Miall, 2003). Similarly, neuropharmacological studies employing non-motor timing tasks also suggest the existence of a prefrontal cognitive system for the processing of temporal information in the second or suprasecond range and a subcortical automatic system controlled by mesostriatal dopaminergic activity for temporal processing in the range of milliseconds (for a review see Rammsayer, 2008). Most recent findings provided some evidence that the transition from sensory/automatic to cognitively mediated timing might lie closer to 250 ms than to 500 ms (Buonomano et al., 2009, Spencer et al., 2009).

In a first attempt to provide direct experimental evidence for the validity of the so-called distinct timing hypothesis for non-motor timing tasks, Rammsayer and Lima (1991) applied a dual-task paradigm guided by the following considerations. If, as implied by Michon's (1985) view, duration discrimination of intervals longer than approximately 500 ms is cognitively mediated, one would expect that duration discrimination under a relatively high cognitive load would be more difficult than duration discrimination under a lower cognitive load. On the other hand, if discrimination of extremely brief intervals is based upon automatic, sensory mechanisms rather than higher-order cognitive processes, performing a concurrent nontemporal cognitive task should not produce a deleterious effect on duration discrimination of intervals in the range of milliseconds. To test these predictions, a dual-task procedure was used with duration discrimination as the primary task and word learning as a secondary nontemporal cognitive task. Results from the dual-task conditions were compared with results from single-task conditions. The rationale for this procedure was the assumption that if two tasks compete for the same pool of cognitive resources then having to perform both tasks simultaneously should impair performance relative to when either task is performed alone. With this approach, Rammsayer and Lima (1991) found that duration discrimination of intervals ranging from 50 to 100 ms is unaffected by a secondary cognitive task, whereas duration discrimination of intervals in the range of seconds is markedly impaired by the same secondary task. Hence, they concluded that temporal processing of intervals in the range of seconds demands cognitve resources, whereas temporal processing of intervals in the range of milliseconds can be considered highly sensory in nature and beyond cognitive control as suggested by Michon (1985).

Although the dual-task approach is considered a most suitable strategy in timing research (cf., Block et al., 2010, Glicksohn, 2001), to date, only very few further attempts have been made to experimentally dissociate the two hypothesized timing mechanisms by means of a dual-task paradigm. In a series of experiments, Rammsayer and Ulrich (2005) employed a mental arithmetic task, a memory search task, and a visuospatial memory task as three different cognitive secondary tasks. While the concurrent mental arithmetic task produced a reliable detrimental effect on duration discrimination of both intervals in the range of seconds and milliseconds, respectively, neither memory search nor visuospatial recall as secondary tasks effectively interfered with performance on duration discrimination irrespective of the range of intervals. The lack of an effect on duration discrimination observed with the latter two secondary tasks could be attributed to the arrangement of the primary and secondary tasks that did not necessarily encourage complete simultaneous processing of temporal and nontemporal information as well as to lower task difficulty compared to the mental arithmetic task. In addition, only for the mental arithmetic task, but neither for the two other secondary tasks nor the duration discrimination tasks, correctness feedback was provided on each trial. As a consequence, participants may have been inclined to be more attentive to the arithmetic than to the duration discrimination task. This could explain why, under the dual-task condition, performance on duration discrimination was reliably impaired while performance on the arithmetic task remained unaffected. Nevertheless, the impairing main effect of the concurrent mental arithmetic task on duration discrimination of brief and long intervals clearly challenged the assumption of two qualitatively distinct timing mechanisms underlying temporal processing of intervals in the second and sub-second range.

When comparing the word learning task employed by Rammsayer and Lima (1991) with the three secondary cognitive tasks used by Rammsayer and Ulrich (2005), another significant difference becomes apparent that may account for the divergent outcome of those two studies. With the word learning task, on each trial, participants were presented with one word and instructed to memorize this word for a recall test at the end of the entire testing session. Thus, the word learning task required storing and updating of information across a series of 50 trials before recall performance was tested. By contrast, with all three cognitive tasks of the Rammsayer and Ulrich study, storing of nontemporal information was confined to a single trial. More specifically, on each trial, participants stored the nontemporal information in memory, while performing the temporal judgment, and immediately afterwards completed the cognitive secondary tasks. There is evidence, however, that passive storage of information for a few seconds does not interfere with concurrent temporal processing (e.g., Fortin & Breton, 1995).

A further crucial difference between the two studies concerns the involvement of memory processes that enable long-term storage of information. In the former study, participants were required to encode and store verbal information across trials for a final recall test at the end of the experiment. This might involve a transfer of information from working memory to a long-term store as well as elaboration of information to enhance storage in long-term memory, a process that has been termed elaborative rehearsal in memory research (cf., Schwartz & Reisberg, 1991). By contrast, Rammsayer and Ulrich's participants could perform the secondary task without such additional processes that enable long-term storage. Therefore, the present study was designed to assess the crucial role of elaborative rehearsal for temporal discrimination of intervals in the range of seconds and milliseconds, respectively.

In order to contrast the effects of short- and long-term storage of nontemporal information on duration discrimination, the present study aims at extending the findings by Rammsayer and Lima (1991). Thus, the present study includes a condition that does require storage of information without the need to transfer information from short-term to long-term storage. For this purpose, we adapted a procedure that was originally proposed by Craik and Watkins (1973). These authors distinguished between maintenance and elaborative rehearsal. Unlike elaborative rehearsal, maintenance rehearsal refers to mere maintenance of information without any cognitive effort to store items in long-term memory. In brief, this procedure basically requires participants to rehearse information over a period of time that is controlled by the experimenter. Participants are told to attend to a series of words and to monitor the sequence of words beginning with a predefined letter (e.g., “B”). They are also told to report the most recently presented word that begins with this letter “B” at the end of the experiment. In order to accomplish this task, no transfer of information from working to long-term memory is required.

In one condition, the maintenance rehearsal condition of the present experiment, this procedure by Craik and Watkins was combined with a duration discrimination task. Each trial started with the presentation of a single word followed by the duration discrimination task. Depending on the initial letter of this word, participants either continued to rehearse the current target word in working memory or replaced it by the word displayed on the screen. After the word was displayed, participants performed the duration discrimination task in the second half of the trial. In the second condition, the elaborative rehearsal condition, the time course of a trial was identical to the previous condition, except that the participants were instructed to memorize each single word for a recall test at the end of the experiment. In this condition, participants were expected to transfer the displayed words into long-term memory requiring additional cognitive effort.

If this additional effort is the major source for the divergent results reported by Rammsayer and Lima, 1991, Rammsayer and Ulrich, 2005, one would expect that elaborative but not maintenance rehearsal affects temporal discrimination of longer time intervals. More precisely, if duration discrimination in the range of milliseconds is highly sensory in nature and beyond cognitive control, discrimination performance should be unaffected by both rehearsal conditions relative to a single task condition without a secondary cognitive task. Furthermore, if duration discrimination of longer intervals is mediated by working memory functions, and in particular by processes associated with transfer of information into long-term memory, only elaborative but not maintenance rehearsal should interfere with duration discrimination. These predictions were tested in the following study.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 48 male and 144 female undergraduate students ranging in age from 19 to 34 years (M = 24.0, SD = 3.3). Male and female participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions (see Procedure) with the restriction that the male:female ratio was 1:3 (i.e., 6 males and 18 females) for each condition. All participants were naïve about the purpose of this study and had normal hearing.

Procedure

Two independent variables – Standard Duration and Secondary Task – were factorially combined in a

Performance on duration discrimination

Table 1 presents 75% difference thresholds and Weber fractions as a function of standard duration and secondary task. While difference thresholds represent a measure of absolute discrimination performance, Weber fractions indicate discrimination performance relative to the duration of the standard interval.

A first two-way ANOVA with factors Standard Duration (50 and 1000 ms) and Secondary Task (no secondary task, maintenance rehearsal, and elaborative rehearsal) was performed for threshold

Discussion

The major goal of the present study was to assess whether different timing mechanisms are involved in the discrimination of short and long intervals. According to the distinct timing hypothesis, temporal processing of durations in the range of seconds is cognitively controlled and, therefore, should interfere with performing on a concurrent cognitive task. By contrast, processing durations in the range of milliseconds is assumed to be based on automatic processing and, thus, concurrent

Conclusion

The present findings are consistent with the notion of two qualitatively different timing mechanisms underlying processing of temporal information in the range of seconds and milliseconds. According to this view, temporal processing of intervals in the second range is mainly based on cognitive processes, whereas temporal processing of intervals in the sub-second range is more automatic and, thus, less susceptible to cognitive interference. Our findings extend the existing data by demonstrating

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (RA 450/9-4).

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